Look at the GOP's Newly Elected Extremists

I write often about the Republican Party for several reasons, not the least of which are the reality that (i) today's GOP is a horrific betrayal of much of what the party once stood for and what I and my Republican ancestors supported, and (ii) for America to regain a stable democracy, the GOP must a reject the grifters, extremists and just plain lunatics who now hold office and who animate the party base.  Donald Trump may be out of office, but many undesirables continue to hold office or were just voted into office,  One piece in the Washington Post looks at some of the nutcases who were just elected to Congress and the sickness within the GOP.  A second piece by a former Republican member of Congress argues that the GOP must look in the mirror and do some serious soul-searching if it wants a long term future. First a look at the newly elected GOP undesirables in Congress:

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the breakout stars of the newly elected freshman class of Republicans in the House of Representatives:

• Rep. Madison Cawthorn (N.C), just 25 years old, earned a coveted speaking slot at the 2020 Republican convention. But parts of his history have been exaggerated or falsified. His campaign ads suggested he was on his way to the Naval Academy before the car accident that left him paralyzed (he had already been rejected by the Academy before his accident). And now the Nation reports that while Cawthorn has repeatedly claimed he was “training” for the Paralympics, he appears never to have competed in paralympic competition at all. When Cawthorn won his seat, his response was “Cry more, lib.”
• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) was already well known as a onetime QAnon supporter (she says she no longer endorses the deranged conspiracy theory) who has claimed that there’s no evidence a plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. The liberal Media Matters has located Facebook exchanges in which Greene endorses the idea that the Parkland school shooting was staged by actors. On Thursday, Greene filed articles of impeachment against President Biden.
• Rep. Lauren Boebert (Colo.), who has ties to right-wing militia members and owns a restaurant called Shooters Grill — where waitstaff visibly pack heat — has gotten into confrontations with Capitol Police over recently installed metal detectors members must pass through to enter the House floor. She also came under scrutiny when other members noted that the day before the assault on the Capitol, she was seen leading a tour of the building, leading some to suspect that she may have provided help to insurrectionists, knowingly or otherwise.

One way to look at these characters is that they’re nothing more than walking clickbait for liberal websites. Some politicians become famous because they’re beloved on their own side, and others become famous because the other side loves to hate them.

But if you were a serious-minded Republican who really did want to spend your time carefully studying issues and meticulously crafting legislation to address them, what would you think your party actually values right now?

The answer is pretty clear: What sells in today’s GOP is performative lib-owning. If you can find issues that activate grievance and tribal identification on the right, then put on a show of angrily channeling what the base is feeling, no matter how misinformed or absurd those beliefs, that’s how you draw attention to yourself.

The most ambitious Republicans, even those who are themselves quite smart and well-educated, see their path to success as pandering to the dumbest and most deluded people in their party. Witness Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas (Princeton, Harvard Law) and Josh Hawley of Missouri (Stanford, Yale Law), who made themselves leaders of the effort to overturn the presidential election, promoting what they absolutely, positively know are lies about widespread fraud.

But wait, you may say, aren’t there equivalents on the Democratic side? Don’t they have their own extremists? There’s a profound difference, which is that the people in Congress who are far to the left — especially those who get the most attention — spend more time thinking about policy in a given week than the likes of Cawthorn and Boebert have in their entire lives.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y), for instance, is a social media star, but she also has a lengthy policy agenda, including workers’ rights and the Green New Deal. Rep. Katie Porter (Calif.) has gone viral with videos in which she wields her whiteboard against hapless corporate executives in hearings, but those are confrontations in which she uses her deep understanding of economics and finance to show — with math! — how profiteering hurts consumers and workers.

Think back to the 2020 presidential primaries, where Democrats had a long discussion about whether their policy agenda should expand the welfare state or restructure government and its relationship to business. They spent months arguing vociferously about the merits of single-payer health care versus the public option. Can you even fathom something like that happening in the 2024 Republican primaries?

There are some Republican members of Congress who care a great deal about policy and would love to become media stars by showing off their creative ideas for trade agreements or tax reform. But that’s not going to get you on Fox News, because their voters don’t really care.

Which means that every Republican, no matter their true inclinations, winds up acting like the grifters and nutbars who keep winning seats in deeply red districts. Whatever happens to a party currently grappling with the legacy of Donald Trump, there isn’t much reason to think it will get any more sane or serious.

The second piece in the Post by the former Republican member of Congress looks at the need for the GOP to take a long look in the mirror and jettison the liars, kooks, and grifters.  Here are excerpts:

Joe Biden is president in large part because Republicans have been incapable of growing the GOP to better reflect the changing demographics in the United States. We won’t be able to change that without addressing the epidemic of misinformation that has infected the party and realigning our party’s actions based on our values.

Republicans have lost seven of the last eight national popular votes, and it only took four years for us to lose the House, Senate and the White House. Republicans aren’t going to achieve electoral success by being seen as the party that defends QAnon extremists who advocate the murder of the former vice president. Nor will we see success by supporting white supremacists who call a Black police officer the n-word while that police officer puts his life on the line to protect democracy. Every Republican on the ballot in 2022 will face campaign attack ads that affiliate them with the domestic terrorists who charged the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

If the party wants a future, the elected officials, pundits and activists who claim to be its members must stop peddling conspiracy theories and drive out those who continue to do so. Republicans must be honest and do the right thing based on conservative values, not the thing that leads to more clicks, comments or shares on social media.

Those of us who were old enough on 9/11 will always remember the image of the second plane slamming into the World Trade Center, just like all of us will remember the images of thousands of people at the Capitol attempting an insurrection on Jan. 6. Both were acts of terrorism conducted by fanatics. If Islamist terrorism was the existential challenge of the early 2000s, then the environment of disinformation, misinformation and lies fueling domestic terrorism is the challenge of our current generation.

“Big Tech” enforcing their terms of service isn’t the problem either. . . . . in the absence of political action to define the appropriate role of technology in our society, these platforms have become the only ones taking real steps to prevent content that further incites violence.

I accept that many of the people who stormed the Capitol believed the lies they were fed. They were lied to not only about the validity of the election, which was the most secure in our history, but also on a host of issues for years. They were radicalized through multiple platforms that sought to advance elected officials’ ambitions or the goals of foreign adversaries. Every person who went from peacefully protesting to joining the insurrection should be found and fully prosecuted, but conservatives need to wake up to a few realities.

The truth is, President Donald Trump lost big time.  . . . . If you believe that there was widespread fraud in the election, then you haven’t reviewed the right data, or you are listening to manipulative voices who wish to make money off you or to hawk merchandise.

Furthermore, if you elevate a flag that has someone’s name on it to the same level that you elevate your national flag, then you are not a patriot; you are part of a cult.

If Republicans want to change their persistent popular vote losses at the national level, then we must realign our actions with our values. . . . . A new GOP starts with us looking in the mirror and being honest with ourselves about what we believe.